Conversation about and activity on Ello has been ramping up over the last few weeks. Ello, for those living relatively balanced lives with healthy relationships to their digital devices, is a new social network that is, in not so many words, promising to be the anti-Facebook. The creators’ goal is to free us from the tyranny of being products packaged for advertisers–remember, if you’re not paying for the product, you are the product. (How this plays out with Ello shall be seen.)

It’s rough around the edges, for sure, but conceptually interesting enough to play with for a minute if you’re into that sort of thing. And I am! I’ve been playing for the last few days, and one of the first things I noticed is that it was difficult to find people I knew. As Clay Shirky put it the other night: “the only first-order feature that anyone cares about on a social network is ‘Where my dogs @?'” Heh. The search function is broken-ish, so the only way I knew how to find my people was (1) to tell people on other social networks how to find me on Ello, sigh, and (2) by looking at the few people I did find, and seeing who they follow. Read more →

If you’re an independent consultant, entrepreneur, or an expert in your field, you’ve probably heard it: Writing a book is one of the best things you can do to level up your career. And, as a media consultant who wrote a book on social media three years ago, I can tell you that’s absolutely true.

But I can also tell you that it isn’t easy, and not just for the creative reasons that come to mind—squeezing out all of your literary juices onto the page and having them whipped into compelling shape is only just the beginning